Review by Thomas Pfister
- Entwicklr Magazin, October 2006

This book's title, .NET 2.0 for Delphi Programmers can easily be misinterpreted. The subtitle, Your Delphi experience makes .NET easy to learn, is a better description. This book uses C# to lead Delphi developers to .NET 2.0 - it's not a book about Delphi for .NET 2.0.

Jon Shemitz is surely known to many readers as the author of Kylix: The Professional Developer's Guide and Reference, published in 2002. Also, he has contributed several substantial articles to American Delphi and Turbo Pascal magazines over the 15 or so years. He began writing this 544-page book in the spring of 2002, and managed to take four years to finish it.

After a short introduction to the.NET technology, Shemitz quickly gets into the depths of the .NET Framework. This explains the ".NET 2.0" in the title. The difference between this book and other books about .NET is that Jon consistently refers to Object Pascal and Delphi for .NET. So, it's really a bit surprising when we get to the introduction to chapter 10, and hear that Jon so prefers C# to Delphi that he doesn't actually use Delphi for .NET, and that the chapter "Delphi for .NET" was written by Hallvard Vassbotn.

The book is full of hints that all Delphi for .NET programmers should know - you will soon be disabused of any preconception that Shemitz doesn't deal with Pascal on .NET. For example, on page 37 you can find the hint that the C# compiler gives a warning if you violate certain system patterns, while the Delphi compiler does not warn the developer who violates the same patterns.

The author discusses C# itself, and not the various larger ecosystems around the language (ADO.NET, Web services, etc.). Shemitz does a fine job balancing depth with clarity.

Developer Studio contains Pascal as well as C# for .NET users.

I recommend this book to Pascal developers who will, or will have to, deal with C#. Shemitz does not give a shallow introduction to C#. He tries to address all facets of this language, and to cross-reference with Delphi for .NET as often as possible. This will get you up to speed very quickly.

You should have this book even if you are a dedicated Delphi for .NET developer who does not plan to switch to C#. You will almost inevitably find .NET examples in C# when working with documentation or the Internet, and with this book's correlation to Delphi, you will understand C# very easily.